Your project got cancelled. Now what?

Most of the time, projects are considered a capital expense — an investment a company makes so that more revenue can be generated in the future. With everyone stuck at home, COVID-19 has put a major damper on the economy and the majority of companies out there are struggling to preserve cash. In order to survive, cost- cutting measures begin and projects will either be delayed or cancelled altogether, as they are typically a major cash spend.

I’ve been there before, and know the fear and anxiety that comes along with your project getting cancelled: Will I get put on a new project? Will I be out of a job? Do I have the skills to transition to a more stable industry if it came to that?

First and foremost, take a deep breath. It’s not the end of the world if your project gets cancelled. Here are four important things to remember moving forward:

Don’t take it personally.

You and your team may have spent years working on a project, and having it cancelled out of nowhere can be very emotional. There’s no closure. It becomes the project that failed.

It’s difficult not to take it personally, especially if you’re the project manager. You wonder if there was something you could have done to prevent the cancellation, but that’s a very dangerous road to go down. You’ll only make yourself more upset and cloud your judgement, which is needed now more than ever.

At the end of the day, you have to remind yourself that the cancellation was a business decision with a multitude of complex factors, many of which are out of your control. . Your project could have been going perfectly: on budget, on schedule, a great team culture — and then all of a sudden, it’s shut down. There is a reason schedules are based on probabilities. Even a P90 schedule has a chance that the project will fail or not be completed — so don’t take it personally.

Look at it as a learning opportunity.

Think there’s no work to be done now that your project has been cancelled? Think again. Now the deconstruction process begins, which is a tremendous learning opportunity for any project manager.

Let’s say you were in the middle of building a new skyscraper and the project gets cancelled. You can’t just leave the building half finished. Now you have a new project to complete: restore the space to a grassy field within six months.

As the project manager, you need to figure out how to do that. How much is it going to cost to demolish the building and ensure that there’s no residual environmental impact? What do you do with all of the pending contracts with vendors that are now being cancelled? How do you negotiate all that? What do you do with all the building materials so they’re not wasted?

Cancelling a project is a project in itself. What’s more, your resources will be constrained because of cost-cutting, so you’ll have a smaller team to help you close everything out. As painful as the situation is, you’re completing an incredibly difficult job and this unique experience will set you apart as a project manager.

Apply what you learn to future projects.

Something that cancelled projects have taught me is to never take for granted the schedule you have. Just because you have float (extra time) to complete a project on paper, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t push your team to deliver ahead of schedule. Why is that?

The schedule is just on paper, and things can change in the blink of an eye — just look at how fast COVID-19 threw us for a loop. But other factors come into play as well: macroeconomics might change or a competitor might enter the market before you and render your project useless.

The faster you get your project completed on or before schedule, the better off you are at reducing your risk of the project not getting to the finish line. Knowing the sting of a cancelled project drives a sense of urgency that helps project managers. Sometimes you need to remind your team that it’s not a done deal until it’s done, and the scars from the experience will help you in the future.

Realize that your skills are transferable.

If your worst fear is realized and you end up losing your job due to a project cancellation, it really isn’t the end of the world — although it can feel like it.

With project management, we are tied to the health of the industry we’re in. But when one industry is in a downturn, there’s always another industry that’s booming.

As a project manager, it’s good to remember that your skills are highly transferable and you could easily transition to another industry, compared to more technical roles.

You have a firm grounding in the principles of how to build something, and that something could be anything from a new stadium to new software. So there’s no need to be pessimistic. You’re bound to find another opportunity in another industry.

Have you ever had a project cancelled? Comment below with how you handled it.